The OSMG that worked on my 403 back in the day (like 2 years ago
) told me when I said as thinking of starting to fix vintage machines to stay away from Brother machines. New and old (he didn't specify the vintage, and I automatically rule out the 50-60s machines from this statement) he said they more often than not have broken gears right from the factory. He said he'd opened boxes straight off the shelf and found broken gears.
The Galaxie 221A I had here looked like the nylon gear had been split by the rivetting stage. It still sewed lovely duckies, but I couldn't sell it in good conscience.
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I didn't differentiate a lot for the first 18 months, and took any machine that came across my desk to learn. I had a lot of Brother machines to dispose of because of broken gears. Now I won't take them at all, unless I can salvage pedals etc from them and I always tell people they're parts only if they want to "sell" one to me.